Operationalising Memetics - Suicide, the Werther Effect, and the
work ofDavid P. Phillips

Paul Marsden
Graduate Research Centre in the Social Sciences
University of Sussex
e-mail PaulMarsden@msn.comtel/fax (44) (0) 117 974 1279

Abstract

One of the major challenges currently facing memetics is the issue of how
to successfully operationalise the emerging paradigm. In other words,
how can we exploit the innovative analytical framework of memetics in order
to generate a body of theoretically informed empirical research? Whilst
there are some important theoretical issues that have yet to be
resolved, the future success of memetics, qua academic discipline, may
depend not so much on elaborate theoretical developments, but on the results
of empirical research findings. Operationalising memetics will not
only involve subjecting memetic theory itself to empirical testing,
but it will also mean assessing the usefulness of the paradigm in describing,
understanding and explaining the sociocultural patterns and phenomena that
are the traditional foci of the social sciences. To this end, the
following paper will explore the operationalisation of memetics by reviewing
the work of the David P. Phillips, a sociologist who has been publishing
empirical research on social contagions since 1974. Although Phillips has
not explicitly referred to memetics, it will be suggested that a number
of practical lessons and guidelines may be drawn from his research, and
a possible outline for operationalising memetics will be proposed based
on his approach.

Summary of empirical research on social contagions conducted by Phillips

The Werther Effect: Fact or Fiction - Summary of Research
by D.P. Phillips

Key findings and Conclusion

Source

SS Suicide rates increased significantly after suicide stories
were reported newspaper stories. The increase was proportional to the amount
of newspaper coverage devoted to the suicide stories

SS Car accident fatalities, particularly those resulting
from single-car accidents increased significantly three days after a suicide
story was publicised in the newspaper press. The increase was proportional
to the intensity of the publicity, and the age of the accident victim was
positively correlated with the age of the suicide story victim. There was
also a corresponding correlation between murder-suicide stories and multiple
car crashes involving passenger deaths.

American Journal of Sociology 1979 Vol. 84 No.5: 1150 -1174

SS Publicised murder-suicides were followed by an increase
in aeroplane crashes (airline and non-commercial). The increase in aeroplane
crashes was proportional to the degree of coverage that these stories received

Social Forces 1980 Vol. 58 (Jun): 1001-1024

SS Daily US suicide rates increased significantly (for a
period of less than ten days) following the appearance of highly publicised
suicide stories on television evening news programmes.

SS Homicides in the US increased following heavyweight championship
prize-fights in a relationship that persisted after correction for secular
trends, seasonal and other extraneous variables. The increase was found
to be largest following heavily publicised fights.

American Sociological Review 1983 Vol. 48 (Aug): 560-568

SS Between 1973 and 1979 teenage suicides increased significantly
following 38 nationally televised stories of suicide. The intensity of
publicity devoted to the suicide stories was significantly correlated to
its effect on teenage suicide rates

New England Journal of Medicine 1986 Vol. 315 No.11: 685-9

"No fact is more readily transmissible by contagion than suicide."

Emile Durkheim (Le Suicide [1897] 1951:141)

In the mid-1770s a peculiar clothing fashion swept across Europe. For
no immediately apparent reason, young men started dressing in yellow trousers,
blue jackets and open-necked shirts. This mildly eccentric fashion spread
from region to region in a manner strangely similar to the epidemics that
were continuing to plague the Old Continent. It turned out that these 18th
century fashion victims all had one thing in common; they had all been
exposed to first novel of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows of
Young Werther. Goethe's novel recounted the desperate plight of Werther,
a young man hopelessly in love with a happily married woman called Charlotte.
In this intense and romantic tale, Goethe describes Werther's rather peculiar
penchant for wearing a colourful mélange of blue jackets, yellow
trousers and open-necked shirts.

Shortly after being published in 1774, Goethe's novel was banned in
several areas across Europe. This was not because certain authorities held
it responsible for the spread of a fashion of rather doubtful taste, but
because there were signs that the book was also the vector for an altogether
more serious contagion. The tale recounted how Werther's clumsy, but painfully
sincere, attempts at winning Charlotte's heart ultimately failed. Destroyed
by rejection, Werther saw no way out of his desperate plight other than
suicide, and using a pistol, he dramatically put an end to his sorrows.

For a memeticist, the social consequences of the publication of
Werther's tragic story are entirely predictable: Not only was Werther's
dress code the object of imitation but so was his somewhat extreme code
of behaviour. Anxious authorities around Europe received reports of increasing
numbers of young men imitating Werther's desperate act. Goethe himself
became convinced that his tale was responsible for a continental wave of
suicides.

"My...friends thought that they must transform poetry into reality,
imitate a novel like this in real life and, in any case, shoot themselves;
and what occurred at first among a few took place later among the general
public..." (Goethe quoted in Phillips 1974:340)

In an attempt to prevent the suicides from reaching epidemic proportions,
a number of authorities banned The Sorrows of Young Werther in the
hope that the imitative behaviour would cease.

Two hundred years later, in 1974, the sociologist David Phillips coined
the term "the Werther effect" to describe imitative suicidal behaviour
transmitted via the mass media. Phillips devised an empirical research
programme to establish whether media reporting of suicide stories really
did affect suicide rates. In over a decade of research, Phillips produced
important evidence that supported the hypothesis that behavioural patterns
in society can in fact operate as contagions. Methodologically speaking,
Phillips' research was interesting because it described one possible solution
to the general problem of operationalising the memetic paradigm which,
to date, has been dominated by anecdotal evidence.

Phillips' methodological approach could be described as quasi-experimental
in that his analysis was based on an experimental protocol, but he
worked with exclusively historical data sourced in the real, uncontrolled,
world. Using newspaper records and official suicide statistics, he identified
a number of `control periods' defined by the absence of front-page newspaper
suicide stories. Using the suicide statistics from these control periods,
he generated a number of expected suicide rates for a pre-defined selection
of `experimental periods' during which front-page suicide stories were
published. Working with a null hypothesis that the front-page newspaper
reporting of suicide stories had no effect on aggregate suicide rates,
he compared the expected rates with the actual rates. After controlling
for seasonal and other spurious effects, Phillips tested for significance
between the two values, and by comparing a number of different experimental
periods, he was able to test for a correlation between suicide rates and
the intensity of media representations.

Phillips' technique was unusual in that other experiments on imitation
and the mass media have tended to be conducted under artificial laboratory
conditions. Whilst some of these experiments have yielded results that
point to a correlation between media representations and imitative behaviour
(e.g. Bandura, Ross and Ross 1963), they have been largely discounted for
failing to accurately replicate the conditions and environment under which
memes are transmitted in the heterogeneous and multifaceted social world.

The results of Phillips' quasi-experimental research could not
be subjected to this "non-relevance" argument precisely because he was
testing for a correlation between media representations and actual social
behaviour in the social world. Importantly, Phillips was not testing
for the relationship between individual behaviour and media representations,
rather he was testing for a relationship between suicide rates and media
representations. Put differently, Phillips was attempting to provide an
explanation of social facts (suicide rates and media representation levels)
through social forces (imitation) mediated via the communication infrastructure
of society. Such a macro-level of analysis is of important theoretical
significance to memetics since it adds a structural element to a theory
otherwise open to the charge of methodological individualism. Severe limitations
on space preclude the development of this more theoretical tangent, but
it is important to recognise that Phillips was testing for the replication
of structural patterns in society rather than investigating the individual
process of replication/transmission per se. In this way, his approach is
an example of what might usefully be called macro-memetics, in contradistinction
to the equally valid micro-memetic approach that currently dominates our
paradigm.

Following Phillips' research protocol, such a macro-memetic analysis
can be broken down into a certain number of stages that together might
outline a possible method for investigating the structural epidemiology
of memes:

1. Define the phenotypical expression/symptomatology that will be used
to measure levels of meme infection (suicide)

2. Measure the prevalence of meme infection over time within a
given population (suicide rates)

3. Measure the exposure rate within a population to this meme
through a particular (mass) medium over time (circulation/viewing figures)

4. Calculate an index of exposure intensity (exposure level multiplied
by the share of total medium content (column length/no. of days on front
page))

5. Define a series of control periods where media transmission
intensity = 0

7. Regress meme infection levels during control period(s) to generate
an expectation for the experimental period based on the null hypothesis
that media representations of the meme have no effect on the incidence
or prevalence of that meme

8. Test for significance between the expected and actual results

9. If expected and actual results are significantly different,
test for further relationships (host similarity/correlation of intensity
and suicide rates)

Figure 1: A New Approach for Memetics?

Such a research programme might yield results providing evidence to
support the hypothesis that meme exposure partly determines the incidence
and prevalence of meme infection. Put differently, Phillips' macro-memetic
approach would help determine whether patterns of behaviour in society
do in fact operate in a manner similar to that of contagions. This would
provide the empirical foundations for the development of a fuller memetic
account of behaviour, providing not only evidence for replication/transmission
but also incorporating the processes of variation and selection. If it
can be established that social facts may sometimes operate as contagions,
meta-studies of the epidemiologies of various different traits and practices
(symptoms of meme infection) might yield clues as to what it is that makes
a social contagion infectious, and which factors influence immunity/susceptibility.[1]
Further, it might then be possible to measure both the fidelity of sociocultural
replication as well as the average time-lapse between exposure and replication
(the incubation period). Thus we could begin to generate results around
a complete evolutionary loop of variation, selection and replication operating
within the (infra) structure of various lines of communication. Mapped
over time, structural lineages of mediated traits and practices could provide
the basis for a memetic phylogeny of society. This would raise the interesting
possibility of an innovative memetic typology of societies derived from
the various modes, and relationship to the means, of cultural reproduction.
Again, this is a theoretical theme that falls outside the scope of the
paper, but such a typology might usefully draw on the social evolutionary
theory developed by Jürgen Habermas (Habermas 1979).

Turning now to the empirical results of this `macro-memetic' research
Phillips has provided evidence to support the claim that suicide does indeed
behave as a social contagion. Specifically, he demonstrated that exposure
to suicide in media stories was a significant variable in accounting for
UK and US suicide rates (Phillips 1974). He was also able to show that
the intensity of meme transmission correlated positively with suicide rates.
In a similar way, Phillips also correlated aeroplane and car accidents,
murder and violent crime rates to mass media reporting. (Phillips 1977,
1979, 1980, 1982a, 1982b, 1983, 1986).

The implications of Phillips' research findings were radical; suicide
appeared to behave as a contagion mediated via, and dependent upon, lines
of mass communication.[2]
However, despite consistent findings in favour of this replication/imitation
thesis, the Werther effect has not been widely integrated into a comprehensive
social scientific understanding of suicide. The reason for this is particularly
relevant to memetics and thus merits a brief review.

There are certainly some important methodological problems in
Phillips' research that could partly explain why replication/imitation
is not a now central concept in contemporary suicide research. In interpreting
the results, Phillips appears to make individual-level inferences from
aggregate findings (ecological fallacy), he is uncritical of the reliability
of official suicide statistics, and he completely ignores the key issues
of definition, intention and performance (suicide as opposed to para-suicide
(Platt 1984), suicidality (Thorlindsson and Bjarnason 1998), attempted
suicide and more generally, risk taking behaviour (Taylor 1982)). These
problems have led to an inevitable discounting of his findings in social
scientific circles (e.g. Baron and Reiss 1985). The key lesson for memetics
here is that it will be important for empirical research to take cognisance
of, and address these issues of validity, reliability and meaning. The
heterophenomenological approach adopted by Dennett (Dennett 1991) may go
some way to address the problems of definition, intention and performance,
and the problems of official statistics may be obviated by directly recording
prevalence rates. However, the greatest problem for the replication/imitation
thesis is theoretical; the Werther effect fundamentally undermines the
still dominant Cartesian understanding of the human subject that underpins
much social scientific explanation. Social contagions are fundamentally
at odds with such an understanding that generally presupposes an irreducible
source of intentionality and rationality (economic and cognitive) behind
human behaviour. This homuncular understanding of the human subject is
part of what Barkow et al. (1992) have called the Standard Social Scientific
Model (SSSM), and its domain assumptions virtually preclude taking evidence
of the Werther effect seriously. Whilst the SSSM might accommodate evidence
to the effect that the media acts as gate-keeper and agenda setter in the
process of communication, any evidence suggesting that we, ourselves,
are emergent properties of this communication process, rather than vice
versa, is incompatible with the `dogma of the ghost in the machine' that
still dominates social science. An alternative understanding of human consciousness,
perhaps similar to Dennett's `Multiple Drafts' functionalist model, will
probably have to become firmly established in social science before memetics
starts to be taken seriously. Put differently, until Cartesian materialism/dualism
ceases to underpin social scientific explanation, the obvious parallel
between Darwin and the Creationists will continue to run deep.

However, I do think that Phillips' research has highlighted a weakness
in the SSSM, which might provide a more direct opportunity for the establishment
of a memetic understanding of suicide and other social behaviour within
"respectable social science". This opportunity lies in the very inability
of the SSSM to account for the phenomenon of replication/imitation from
within its own homuncular paradigm. The more concrete evidence that memetics
can provide to support the hypothesis that traits and practices in society
do evolve according to principles of variation, selection and replication/transmission,
then the more, I believe, the SSSM will be subjected to an increasingly
acute crisis of legitimation. This is why I believe the operationalisation
of memetics is so crucial to the development of the paradigm.

Interestingly enough, the memetic challenge to the sociology of
suicide does have an historical precedent, dating back a hundred years
to the competing analytical frameworks of Gabriel Tarde (Tarde [1903] 1962)
and Emile Durkheim (Durkheim [1897] 1952). However, Tarde'sproto-memetic
framework was largely abandoned by sociologists in favour of the approach
proposed by Durkheim. In his seminal text, Le Suicide, Durkheim
explicitly discounted the effects of imitation on suicide rates, arguing
that any effect of imitation would be precipitative, minor, and local,
and thus insignificant at aggregate level. Whilst the social scientific
understanding of suicide has certainly evolved since Durkheim's time, theoretically
informed research has tended to either develop out of his original regulation/integration
thesis (e.g. Thorlindsson and Bjarnason, 1998), or limit itself to a largely
interpretavist critique of his method (e.g. Douglas 1967). However more
recently, empirical research has begun to include evidence on replication/imitation.
This third approach, sometimes known as risk factor analysis, is characterised
by the absence of any organising or explanatory principle (Hood-Williams
1996). More of a collection of statistical correlations between antecedent
conditions and suicidality than a theory per se, risk factor analysis provides
explanations for variations within and between populations that are couched
in terms of differential exposure to risk factors (Charlton et al. 1993),
including social contagions.

This theory-neutral territory is perhaps the ideal ground for developing
a comprehensive memetic understanding of suicide. Recent research has tended
to confirm the replication/imitation thesis, and has concerned itself with
measuring the effects of this phenomenon (Gould et al. 1989 1990). Stack
(1990), in a review of research results, concluded that the degree of suicide
content in the mass media is indeed an important variable in accounting
for varying suicide rates. Further research has been undertaken in order
to demonstrate the circumstances under which the suicide contagion is particularly
infectious (Stack, 1987, Bjarnason and Thorlindsson 1994). It is now generally
accepted that a spatio-temporal clustering of imitative suicidal behaviour
does occur, and that the Werther effect may account for a significant proportion
of youth suicides in the US (Gould et al 1989). In consequence, a US Government
endorsed programme on suicide contagion has now been set up to provide
guidelines and recommendations for minimising the Werther effect,[3]
and a similar Government project also exists in Australia.[4]

However, as critics of Phillips' research have pointed out (e.g.
Baron and Reiss 1985:361), without a credible theory of contagion or imitation
upon which hypotheses may be tested, quasi-experimental research findings,
such as those of Phillips, may invite ex-post reinterpretations as to the
nature and existence of these putative social contagions. This means that
until a comprehensive theory of replication/imitation is developed, evidence
will probably be simply ignored because it doesn't `fit' the SSSM. This,
of course, is where I believe the opportunity for memetics lies, through
the theoretically informed provision of empirical evidence of contagion
and imitation from an alternative non-homuncular paradigm.

The purpose of this paper has not been to develop a memetic theory of
suicide, (a central task of my DPhil thesis) but to demonstrate the pertinence
of Phillips' research for the memetic paradigm methodologically, empirically
and politically. Health authorities, if not academia, already accept the
central tenet of our paradigm, and this important fact may provide memetics
with a key opportunity for developing academic respectability and funding.
A memetic approach, operationalised as the epidemiology of social contagions
in society could build on research such as that conducted by Phillips,
and could capitalise on the inability of current paradigms to adequately
deal with the phenomenon of replication/imitation. Operationalising memetics
as epidemiology suggests that one of the central tasks of our discipline
may be to map the structural evolution and spread of social patterns of
behaviour within society in terms of the familiar evolutionary loop of
variation, selection, and replication. This macro-memetic approach could
be complemented by, and conceptually integrated with, the micro-memetic
analysis of differential infection as proposed by Lynch (1997) and Brodie
(1996). These complementary approaches might provide the basis for a comprehensive
analytical framework for generating a body of theoretically informed evidence
relating to social contagions, which in turn might lay the foundations
for the long overdue Kuhnian paradigm shift that will finally see the integration
of social science within a broader evolutionary paradigm.

Notes and References

[1] This
research might perhaps draw on the research of McGuire (1964) who has developed
an inoculation model in the social psychology of persuasion.

[2]Other researchers have subsequently adopted Phillips' quasi-experimental
approach to demonstrate that other traits and practices may operate as
social contagions transmitted via the mass media (e.g. Mazur 1982 on bomb
threats)

[3]
The suicide contagion thesis has impacted on public policy in the U.S.
following a recent CDC (Center for Disease Control and Prevention) endorsed
national workshop (CDC 1994).

Phillips, D.P. (1982) "The Impact of Fictional Television Stories
on U.S. Adult Fatalities: New Evidence on the Effect of the Mass Media
on Violence" in American Journal of Sociology 87 No. 6: 1340-1359.